Tracing the Tribe is a blog about Jewish genealogy - All the developments, tools and resources you'll need to peer more closely into your family tree. Created in 2006 at JTA's request, it is now independent.

15 March 2011

Claiming to be the world's largest free genealogy search engine, Mocavo.com launched today.

The tag line reads, "Searching billions of names in tens of thousands of free sources."

The world’s largest free genealogy search engine, says Mocavo.com, provides genealogists access to the best free genealogy content on the web including billions of names, dates and places worldwide.

The site seeks to index and make searchable all of the world’s free genealogy information.

According to the website, Mocavo.com discovers new sites every day. Sites currently searchable include genealogy message boards, family trees, state and local historical societies. Some of the well-known sites that Mocavo accesses include the Library of Congress, National Archives, Ellis Island, Find A Grave, the Internet Archive, various U.S. state archives, and large numbers of genealogy sites built by individuals for their own family history.

Mocavo links directly to the original content sites.

Dick Eastman and Randy Seaver have already posted about their experiences. Tracing the Tribe is contributing to the Jewish experience on the new site.

I usually start with my names of interest, TALALAY and DARDASHTI, moving onto the geographical locations important to this research, as well as other topics of interest. The website claims to enable the search of more than 50 billion words, so there must be something for Tracing the Tribe, right?

There were 168 results for TALALAY and 1,757 entries for DARDASHTI.

The TALALAY entries included Ancestry board posts, conference entries and more. This search did offer a few new ones that I need to follow up on, and it saved me from what usually happens on a Google search, which produces thousands of references to cousins producer Rachel Talalay and her films, Dr. Paul Talalay (Rachel's father), the latex rubber Talalay process and broccoli sprouts.

The DARDASHTI entries included many for Tracing the Tribe, of course, but the others included many conference entries.

My first geographical location -Mogilev, Belarus - displayed more than 1,550 hits, mostly from JewishGen's various pages, but aso including other sites. Some results need to be investigated more thoroughly.

A search for "sephardic" - important for many Tracing the Tribe readers - produced more than 7,000 results, mostly from JewishGen. "Jewish Sephardic" brought out some 1,100. There were differences in the results.

A search for "Tracing the Tribe," brought in some 71 hits, while "Jewish genealogy" resulted in nearly 20,000 results, covering a wide gamut of resources (JewishGen, Jewish genealogical societies, various archives, libraries, book lists, individual family history pages and much more).

Searching merely for "Jewish," produced nearly 680,000 results. Among these were state history sites, message boards, state sites for Jewish archives, museums, JGSs, local history sites, cemeteries and many more.

Tracing the Tribe suggests you try it for your own "dot on the map" and surnames. Many more sites will likely be added and searches will produce many more results.

Mocavo.com also has a Facebook page, which Tracing the Tribe has "liked." I think you'll also like it.

Try it out and let your fellow readers know what you've found in your own search.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Schelly Talalay Dardashti has tracked her family history through Belarus, Russia, Lithuania, Spain, Iran and elsewhere. A journalist, her articles on genealogy have been widely published. In addition to genealogy blogging (since 2006), she speaks at Jewish and general genealogy conferences, co-founded GenClass.com. Past president of the five-branched JFRA Israel, a Jewish genealogical association, she is a member of several professional organizations.

Tracing the Tribe: 2011's Best 40 Blogs - Heritage Category

Tracing the Tribe: 2010's Best 40 Gen Blogs: Heritage Category

Tracing the Tribe is #10

Tracing the Tribe "Best for Jewish Researchers"

RootsTech 2012 - Official Blogger

RootsTech 2011 Blogger

FGS 2011 - Official Blogger

Jamboree 2011 - Speaker/Blogger

Mirror Site

Tracing the Tribe's mirror site will not be updated as technical problems seem to have been resolved. Readers using Internet Explorer and still seeing error messages may wish to subscribe via email alerts or download Mozilla Firefox.

NOTICE TO SPLOGGERS

You may NOT use the contents of this site for commercial purposes without explicit permission from the author and blog owner. Commercial purposes includes blogs with ads and income generating features, and/or blogs or sites using feed content as a replacement for original content. Full content usage is not permitted. To ask for permission, write to ask AT tracingthetribe DOT com